But as Democrats look for a way to speed up the health reform debate, a mini-conference modeled after the stimulus bill negotiations might be what works.

With the president’s year-end deadline for health care reform looming, congressional Democrats know they’ll almost certainly have to short-circuit the legislative process to get the bill done.

The problem is, all of the options for turbocharging the debate come with their own downsides, but those still pale in comparison to the biggest risk facing Democrats: failure.

“We’ve come to the point where if it’s going to happen by the end of the year, at least one of the ordinary steps would have to be abridged,” said David Kendall, a senior health policy fellow at Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank.

Still, even with a few procedural tricks up their sleeves, Democrats face the monumental task of crafting a legislation that can win 60 votes — legislation that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has still not introduced but that is expected to come as early as Wednesday. And Reid’s caucus must also weather unified Republican opposition. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Sunday that the full Senate should have six weeks to review the bill.

And that leaves Democrats considering three major fast-track options: the mini-conference; reconciliation, which would require only 51 votes; and ping-pong, where the bill goes back and forth between the Senate and the House until they can negotiate a final compromise.

The most-talked-about shortcut is end-running the formal conference committee process in favor of some sort of mini-conference based out of the leadership offices. Hashing out differences between the House and Senate bills in conference could take weeks, but White House aides and congressional leaders doing the work behind the scenes could speed the process.

Democratic officials in the White House and Congress said they are envisioning an endgame similar to that of the $787 billion stimulus package. The House approved the stimulus on Jan. 28, and the Senate passed its version on Feb. 10. Three days later, despite dramatic differences, party leaders privately negotiated a compromise and passed it. The conference committee was largely a formality.

“The White House believes that this can still be done by the end of the year and that it is doable,” a senior White House official said Tuesday. “We think the looming challenges of a conference are mostly overplayed. We know what the big issues are.”

Still, the strategy risks infuriating senators who expect a conference committee spot and are anxious to use that clout to shape the final bill. And a bill negotiated behind closed doors among Democratic leaders and the White House is sure to raise the ire of Republicans and perhaps even Democrats, should they feel that their prerogatives are being ignored.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said a full-blown conference committee would take too long. The “preconference” model, which was used for the stimulus package and on other bills over the years, “is a way of shortening it,” Conrad said. “To me, it doesn’t get around the conference committee, but it does shorten it. I have no trouble with it.”

Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democratic moderate, said it’s one of the only ways to get a bill done by year’s end.

“If they have behind-the-scenes negotiations, go into the conference committee to keep up appearances, ... but it only lasted a day or two, and then it came back to both houses, you might be able to do that,” Bayh said, adding that a “full-blown conference” would be almost impossible to finish by Christmas.

But Bayh and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said the more likely scenario is that the Senate will pass a bill by Christmas that is finalized and on the president’s desk in January.

Privately, even more Democrats say that the end-of-year deadline is probably not doable. But to admit that now would erase the urgency that leadership and the White House are using to build momentum. Politically, Democrats understand that they need to finish reform as soon as possible to avoid taking tough votes in an election year in which their party wants to focus on jobs and rebuilding the economy.

The other scenario topping Democrats’ list is often known as ping-pong. Under this scenario, Reid would insert his reforms into a House bill that has already passed both chambers, vote it out of the Senate and into the House, where, once approved, it would go straight to Obama’s desk. The maneuver is called a ping-pong because if changes are made, the bill bounces back and forth between the chambers until both sides pass a final bill. This scenario depends in large part on whether the Senate approves a bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) considers palatable to her caucus, officials said. It’s a sweet spot that can be difficult to find.

The procedure has become a common one when passing major legislation. The housing and bank bailout bills were passed using ping-pong.

And the last option on the table is a procedural motion known as reconciliation, which would allow Democrats to circumvent the 60-vote threshold and pass parts of the bill with a simple majority.

But Democrats have suggested going this route would require a bill to go back through the committee process before coming to the floor, which would significantly slow it down. It would also open up the bill to even more procedural attacks by Republicans. And because it’s a budgetary maneuver, reconciliation would gut the bill of many important policy provisions that don’t affect spending.

It has become an even tougher sell among progressives who had previously championed it as a way to ensure that the bill has a strong public option.

Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who said he favored the maneuver in August, said Tuesday that he doesn’t want Reid to use it, and he doesn’t believe the leader will.

“Reconciliation doesn’t work,” Rockefeller said, adding that if he had favored it in the pas,t he “must have been drunk.”

No matter what road Democrats choose, they may be punch drunk by the end of it.

“The closer we get to the finish line, the more ferocious the jostling will be,” said the Brookings Institution’s Bill Galston. “We haven’t even seen the half of it yet.”

Patrick O’Connor contributed to this story.

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